Peak Medical targets 1.4 billion market with AI-powered post-op care
Peak Medical is on a mission to transform home healthcare for patients undergoing joint replacement surgeries.
Peak Medical is on a mission to transform home healthcare for patients undergoing joint replacement surgeries.
With a target market of 582 million people, the company is focused on making high-quality, accessible care available to everyone.
At the core of this technology is BIBO (Better In Better Out) – a digital medical software designed to guide patients through pre- and post-operative care with clinical precision.
Peak Medical’s founder and CEO, Hayley Saddington, showcased the possibilities of BIBO at SmartCompany’s the Pitch competition in Melbourne on Wednesday night.
The judging panel for the event included Maxine Lee, chief operating officer at Skalata VC, and Mark Newman, LaunchVic’s startup programs manager.
The competition’s grand prize saw the winner, housing design startup Oltre, walk away with a $10,000 technology hardware pack and access to a mentoring program from Dell Technologies and Dell For Startups.
How BIBO Works
“BIBO is essentially an app that patients go home with, given to them by their surgeon or physiotherapist,” Saddington said in an interview with SmartCompany.
“Way before their surgery starts, BIBO works with them to guide them through their exercises in a really quality-based way.”
Unlike other apps, BIBO provides real-time corrections during exercises.
“If they’re slightly wonky, it corrects them. If they’re going too fast, it corrects them,” Saddington explains.
This ensures patients engage their muscles properly and progress safely, even when they encounter pain.
“Traditionally, if someone stops due to pain, they’ll just stop. BIBO does a quick analysis, understands their pain, and guides them safely through,” Saddington adds.
The app also captures crucial data, such as wound healing progress.
“If something’s looking not right, we absolutely raise it really early to go see a healthcare professional, so we can avoid a follow-up surgery or something more serious,” says Saddington.
Ambition and market potential
At the present time, BIBO only works with knee injuries but there are plans to expand much further.
“We also do soft tissue, so that means the ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] of the knee, so lots of different components on the same joint,” says Saddington.
“Our plan to scale is we start with the knee in joints, and we go hip, we go shoulder, we go spine, we go into the pediatric sector”.
In terms of market expansion, Saddington emphasises the significant potential in the Asia-Pacific region.
“There’s a major market gap for this technology in the Asia-Pacific market, and that opens up around 1.4 billion [people]. No one else is doing that,” she says.
Since launching in 2020, Peak Medical has made considerable progress.
“We have a team of seven, the majority of whom are engineers and clinicians,” says Saddington.
She also highlights two major upcoming milestones.
“We’re starting a regulatory pathway with the TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) and we’re beginning a pilot trial with the hospital.”
Overcoming challenges
One of the biggest challenges Peak Medical faced was determining, and validating, who would pay for its service.
“We’ve overcome that by streamlining into Bupa and other health funds and hospitals to answer the questions: ‘Will you pay? How much will you pay?’ Great, validated,” says Saddington.
Saddington also speaks about the difficulty of securing investment in health tech.
“[Some] people don’t fully understand healthcare. They think it’s got a lot of risks and length to market, which it does, so it requires a really specific investor who understands and appreciates that,” she explains.
However, Peak Medical has successfully attracted investors who understand the space.
“We have incredible investors from the Cerebral Palsy Alliance, professors in science at UNSW… so some really good people who understand tech and health have come on board,” Saddington adds.
Are you ready to pitch to a panel of leading VCs and startup founders? Applications to the Pitch are now open for Sydney!
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